Banglumpoo

An exhausting morning turned into a very relaxing and wonderful day! We woke up early at our homestay and had anther yummy home cooked breakfast - Thai chicken wings, black rice, and apples. Tim made some more coffee and then we relaxed for a bit until check out time. Next was the exhausting part. The Late King's cremation ceremony began at 7:00 am this morning with his urn being walked from the Grand Palace to the crematorium. People lined the streets and all of the roads were blocked off, including our hotel's street. We caught a cab near the homestay (after the first one told us "no") and the driver basically told us he would get us as close as he could and then we would have to walk. Luckily, it ended up only being about a mile walk. Unfortunately, this mile was through the busiest area of the ceremony right by the Palace. We had to go through security and then walk through thousands of mourning Thai people dressed in all black, waiting for their chance to watch the urn pass by.

We finally made it to our hotel but weren't yet able to check in. So we dropped off our luggage and walked to a small nearby restaurant for lunch - red curry with shrimp for me and green curry with chicken for Tim. It was delicious. Then we went back to the hotel, checked into our very nice room, and relaxed for hours. When we finally got up, we went up to the rooftop pool to swim laps for awhile. We had worked up an appetite so we showered and got ready for dinner. After wandering around for awhile, we noticed that a lot of the restaurants were closed for the ceremonies. The only ones that were opened appeared to be touristy and likely not very good. So we went back to our lunch restaurant! We had spring rolls, pad Thai with chicken (Tim) and basil chicken (me). It was all delicious. Now we are getting to bed early before our early trip to the islands tomorrow.Read more